role of an agile project manager
Post on 08-May-2015
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Role of a Agile Project Manager
How is it different?
Agile PM
Traditional Project Management manages the known, Agile Project Management manages the unknown
There are distinctly different ways how you manage the unknown versus the known
There are distinctly different people and styles that are more suited to managing the unknown versus the known
Traditional PM tendencies
Detail Oriented
Manages the details
Manages the Plan
Doesn’t prefer change
Guardian Temperament
Agile PM tendencies
Encourages Change
Comfortable with Ambiguity
Comfortable with Delegation, Trust
Manages Value
Idealist Temperament
Idealist
These are big picture people who lead followers to pursue great dreams. They thrive on people issues and gravitate toward the soft skills: conflict resolution, negotiation, team building, facilitating.
Diplomacy and strategy are their strong suits
Guardian
People with this temperament like to play by a set of rules. These are the stabilizers in the organization, working to keep the boat on an even keel.
Meeting budgets and deadlines and following the plan are important to Guardians.
The Difference
In waterfall projects you focus on managing people and tasks, in Agile projects you focus on leading the process
Facilitate decision making versus making the decisions
Deliverable differencesTraditional Agile
Work Breakdown Structure Priorized Backlog
Weekly Status Reports Daily Stand ups
Project Plan Iteration Plan
MS Project Stickies
Problem Solver Problem Solver Assistant
Text Reports Visual Boards
7 Key TraitsCross Functional
Relationship Builder
Encourages Innovation
Comfortable with ambiguity
Facilitator
Prefers to collaborate
Provide visibility, not status
Cross Functional
Ideally an Agile PM will also play other roles on the project as well
Analyst
Developer
Tester
Relationship Builder
On a Traditional Project, the Analysts usually own the relationship with the business
On an Agile Project, the Analysts still have a strong relationship, but the Agile PM needs to also build a strong relationship to allow them to help to promote value
To do this they need to understand the solution
Encourages Innovation
As an Agile Team member and leader, the Project Manager need to encourage the team to innovate
This may cause more change, but also more value
Comfortable with Ambiguity
The Agile PM must be comfortable with ambiguity and vagueness
The Agile PM must be comfortable with not having a detailed plan or solution up front
Facilitator
The Agile Project Manager does not have a position of authority
As a consequence, they must excel at facilitating decisions with the client and between team mates
Prefers to Collaborate
An Agile PM, like all Agile team members, must prefer to collaborate.
Even when this collaboration is not required. This is done because the PM believes that better solutions will arise.
Provides Visibility, not status
Instead of preparing status reports to communicate status, the Agile PM creates an environments that provides total visibility to the status of the project for all to see
Kanban Boards, Visual Charts, User Story Maps
SummaryAn Agile Project Manager is a different role and set of skills that a traditional PM
Usually it helps if the Agile PM has a base competency in another skill set on the project as well
Many of the traditional PM characteristics are still required, but these Agile characteristics are important to have in addition
Questions ?
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